This research area concerns the improvement and/or the development of functional properties of polymers which often constitute the product lines of Nexans, in order to respond to fast market challenges as the reliability in complex surroundings, the reduction of the total cost, the saving of weight and or volume.
More specifically the main research domains are :
- Insulating polymers
- Conductive polymers
- Filled polymers with non linear properties
- Molecular modeling
- Chemical and physical analysis
Some key examples :
New fire retardant systems
Development of low cost halogen free fire retardant (HFFR) materials will compete with today's halogenated compounds. In addition to the fire retardancy requirements, demands for low smoke emission and non-corrosive gases during the burning have also to be fulfilled. These HFFR materials must have similar properties and raw material cost as currently used compounds.
Development of new grafting or crosslinking process
Twin screw extruder used for the reactive processing
Development focuses on new grafting or crosslinking process leading to materials which can be processed as thermoplastic ones. Nexans need flexible fire retardant TPEs with properties adjusted to their fields of application and produced by Nexans at low cost.
These fields of applications require good thermomechanical properties and, for some applications, the same features as materials crosslinked by what are now classical ways (hot set test at 200°C).
